Mechanics of crawling cells

Such a mechanism not only should explain the advancement of the leading edge but also the movement of the whole cell, i.e. the material flux taking place from the cell body to the periphery. Even if the lamella periphery itself may be motile by actin turnover this scheme may represent an oversimplification if applied to the whole cell. Considering the complexity of a whole cell simplifying model systems may not lead to adequate descriptions of the mechanisms as they occur within cells with a highly complex structure, although the model might be consistent and sufficient to describe, i.e. crawling in general.